Managing Your E-Marketing

By:

Joel Hughes

In managing nearly any business, you most likely have a list of leads, prospects and current customers somewhere. Maybe you have them organized in a CRM system like SalesForce, SugarCRM or ACT, or perhaps they are in a bunch of Excel spreadsheets held by your office manager. Regardless of how they are stored and organized, do you have a plan for how you are going to reach out to them electronically and measure the effectiveness of that communication? Here are a few things to think about as you develop and tweak that plan.

Behavior tracking. Who opened, clicked or interacted with your last e-mail marketing campaign? Was this the first time they interacted or is this part of a series of behaviors that might make them a stronger prospect versus someone else?

Content testing. How are you testing one marketing message or campaign versus another? Consider A/B testing with subject lines or message body content. Measure the results and respond accordingly.

Drip or behavior-based campaigns. Rather than just blasting out a single marketing message, consider following up the initial marketing message with another based on previous clicks or opens. Your first blast could be a wide branding message, and the second blast to whoever interacted with that message could include a specific call to action.

Figure out where your prospects are in the buying cycle. Don’t be afraid to flat out ask them where they are in the buying cycle with a contact form. I’d rather have five ready-to-buy leads than 500 leads that I haven’t posed the question to yet.

Be mindful of list fatigue. Using behavior tracking, be sure to monitor the frequency of your marketing touches. Don’t be afraid to pull the throttle back a little bit on your marketing if you feel like your audience is getting burned out.

List pruning and maintenance. If someone hasn’t interacted with your campaigns for a long time – say, three to six months – target him with a final specific campaign to try to win his attention back, and take him off the list if he is no longer interested. This is known as re-engagement and list grooming.

Segmentation and categorization. Target your campaigns as much as possible. If you work in multiple markets, be sure to segment your touches to the appropriate prospects to avoid sending them irrelevant content.

Joel Hughes is a founding principal of MediaPress Studios, a subsidiary of Scranton Gillette Communications Inc. Hughes can be reached at jhughes@sgcmail.com or 847.391.1015. You can read more by Joel at the MediaPress Studios website.

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